When Madison Metropolitan School District communications director Tim LeMonds sued his employer in March to block release of a complaint against him, he claimed there would be grave repercussions if the public were allowed to see the allegations it contained.

Access to the documents, LeMonds’ lawyers argued, would harm the school district’s “ability to effectively function” and “almost certainly subject Mr. LeMonds to unwarranted, unfair and irreversible public ridicule and gossip, negative public perception, and jeopardize his ability to credibly perform his duties as MMSD’s chief public spokesperson.”

At a hearing on May 25, however, Dane County Circuit Judge Rhonda Lanford rejected LeMonds’ claims, instead finding an overriding public interest in access to the complaint.

“There is a significant public interest in the release of documents pertaining to investigations and public employees,” Lanford said. “It’s critical that the public oversee the public body and evaluate the matter in which it fulfills its responsibilities.”

Shortly after the ruling, the school district released the 14-page complaint, which had been signed by seven current and former district employees and alleged that LeMonds engaged in “years of screaming, demoralizing criticism, name-calling, belittling, lying, and intimidation” directed toward employees and local journalists, especially women and people of color. 

The complaint alleges that several employees quit their jobs in part because of the experiences with LeMonds, sometimes in large part. “We do not feel Tim LeMonds is fit to work in our department,” the employees wrote.

While the district investigated and concluded there was “insufficient evidence” that LeMonds violated workplace policies, the probe did not cover all aspects of the complaint, and the district in court papers denied that all accusations against LeMonds “were found to be without merit,” as he claimed.

The case is important to the Madison community, but it also has broader consequences for the state. Here’s why.

First, Lanford’s ruling highlights a fundamental value embedded in Wisconsin’s public records law: accountability. Citizens have a right to know what their government is doing beyond just what those in power want to tell them. Courts have repeatedly recognized this monitorial function in the context of employment investigations, concluding that the public has a substantial interest in learning how the government investigates allegations of employment misconduct so it can assess the nature and propriety of the investigation.

As for LeMonds’ concerns about his reputation, a Wisconsin state appeals court has held that high-ranking officials — like LeMonds — should expect “close public scrutiny” and that once an investigation has concluded, “the danger of warrantless harm to reputation is reduced.”

Second, the case is important because of how it arose: by the inquiry of a local journalist.

After WMTV reporter Elizabeth Wadas filed a records request in December that covered the complaint at issue, MMSD followed the law and determined that the record should be released. When LeMonds was informed of this decision, he went to court. Like nearly all litigants who seek to block the release of records using this provision of the law, he lost.

That may be in part because the television station hired lawyers to intervene in the litigation and argue for disclosure of the complaint.

As local news outlets in the United States face budget cuts and closures due to declining revenue, it has become increasingly challenging for local journalists to spend money on litigating records disputes. WMTV’s commitment to its watchdog role is a bright light. 

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Council Treasurer Jonathan Anderson is a former Wisconsin journalist and current Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota.

Your Right to Know: Records case a win for public accountability is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Josh Kaul and Eric Toney are miles apart on many issues, but when it comes to open government, the candidates vying for Wisconsin attorney general in the Nov. 8 election agree: more money is needed to handle enforcement of the state’s transparency laws.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council sent questionnaires to Kaul, the Democratic incumbent, and his Republican challenger, Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney.

The state Department of Justice, which the attorney general heads, is empowered by statute to interpret and enforce Wisconsin’s public records and open meetings laws. The department’s Office of Open Government handles that job, in addition to responding to public records requests.

In assessing the office’s strengths and weaknesses, both candidates mentioned the office’s processing times for handling public records requests and responding to inquiries. Toney said the office is not presently prioritized and that DOJ’s response times to public records requests have increased sharply during Kaul’s tenure. 

Both candidates cited the need for more funding. Toney wrote that he would “apply sufficient resources and prioritize the proper administration and enforcement of these laws.” He criticized Kaul for not updating advice online since May 2021, and for posting few responses to public records requests on the DOJ website.

Kaul said the Office of Open Government “does an excellent job with the limited resources available,” but that more resources would allow it to respond more quickly. He highlighted the office’s efforts to provide guidance on open meetings law challenges during the early days of the pandemic and for parsing the effects of Marsy’s Law on public records access.

The candidates also commented on two recent state Supreme Court decisions involving the public records law.

In the first case, Friends of Frame Park v. City of Waukesha, the court in a 4-3 ruling changed the standard for when requesters can recover attorney’s fees in lawsuits over access to public records. The decision makes it easier for government authorities to avoid paying a requester’s attorney’s fees by voluntarily releasing the requested records after a lawsuit is filed.

Both candidates expressed concern about the ruling, which Kaul said “removed a key check on unnecessary delays in public records compliance, undermines transparency in government, and, in many cases, could make obtaining records cost-prohibitive.” 

Toney said he would work with the Legislature to address the issues raised by the decision, saying “legal maneuvering by well-funded government lawyers should not absolve members of the public from remedies for violations of public records law.”

In the other case, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce v. Evers, the state Supreme Court held 4-3 that business groups are not entitled to challenge the Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ decision to release data regarding employers linked to COVID-19 outbreaks. WMC and other trade associations had sued to block disclosure of this data, which the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel requested. 

Kaul said he agreed with the decision, which he described as a “straight-forward application of the relevant statutory language.” Toney, echoing the dissenting justices, said the case raised serious privacy issues and suggested there may be “instances where third parties must be able to intervene” in records cases, although this ability “shouldn’t automatically be presumed.”

To read the candidates’ full responses, see this column at wisfoic.org.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Council member Jonathan Anderson is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota and a former Wisconsin journalist.

Your Right to Know: Wisconsin AG candidates weigh in on transparency is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Here are some questions for parents to ponder:

Do you care if your kids get COVID-19? 

Do you want to be able to stay informed about coronavirus cases in your community? 

Should officials responsible for public health and education be held accountable for how they respond (or fail to respond) to the pandemic?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may find it troubling that the Wisconsin Department of Health Services does not name which schools have COVID-19 cases. Go to the agency’s Facility-Wide Public Health Investigations website and you’ll instead find aggregate numbers of case investigations for de-identified “educational facilities,” which cover daycare centers, schools, colleges and universities.

The state knows the identities of schools, so why conceal them? I asked DHS spokesperson Jennifer Miller, who said in an email that her agency defers to local authorities to “make the best decisions for their communities.” That means it reports outbreaks in schools the same way it reports outbreaks in most other facilities: as overall numbers by county or region.

“We see no public health value in releasing the names of the school districts with active cases of COVID-19,” Miller wrote.

That latter point surprised me. There is no public health value in knowing which schools have COVID-19 cases?

Really?

Then why do some school districts voluntarily disclose school-specific case data? Why does the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the state’s largest news organization, devote substantial time and resources to independently tracking cases in schools around the state and posting that data online? Why do some other states, including Minnesota, New York, Idaho and Tennessee, centrally report cases in their school systems?

All of these players recognize the obvious value in knowing which schools have COVID-19 cases.

To be fair, DHS has deployed robust tools to help the public and press track the general spread and severity of COVID-19. Data pages on the agency’s website show the number of confirmed cases and the trajectory of those cases over time. The site also shows regional hospitalization rates, including the number of ICU beds and ventilators in use.

But the state’s refusal to identify specific schools with COVID-19 cases suggests a more pernicious problem: that officials don’t trust parents and students to have easy public access to information that could put schools or administrators in a negative light.

On April 29, in the early weeks of the pandemic, DHS Secretary-designee Andrea Palm touted the availability of outbreak information on the agency’s website, writing in a press release: “Data are one of our most critical tools to better understand and fight COVID-19. It is important that we share this information with the public so they understand how we are making decisions about our response to COVID-19, as well as better understand how this virus is impacting different areas of Wisconsin.”

I couldn’t agree more. Palm should follow through by posting on the DHS website the names of all schools with COVID-19 cases and the severity of such cases.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Council member Jonathan Anderson is a former Wisconsin journalist and current Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Your Right to Know: State should name schools with COVID-19 cases is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Read Our Policies

Our Policies

• Editorial Standards Page
• Ethics Policy
• Diversity Statement
• Diversity Staffing Report
• Corrections Policy
• Ownership Structure, Funding
• Founding Date
• Masthead
• Mission Statement with Coverage Priorities
• Fact-checking Standards
• Unnamed Sources Policy

---

Editorial Standards Page

Reading Time: 3 minutes

[vimeo 243723065 w=771 h=434]

Wisconsin Watch is a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news outlet. We increase the quality and quantity of investigative reporting in Wisconsin, while training current and future investigative journalists. Our work fosters an informed citizenry and strengthens democracy.

We currently have reporters based in Madison, Milwaukee, and Oshkosh, and have other members of our robust editorial and business teams located across the state. We collaborate and share our content with mainstream and niche media across the Wisconsin and the nation.

We are a 501(c)(3) charitable organization operated by a professional staff under the guidance of a nationally noted board of directors. Our legal name is Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (WCIJ Inc.).

Wisconsin Watch collaborates with, but is independent of, the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication, where it is housed. Our organization receives free office space from the university in exchange for hiring paid student interns and for providing services and educational resources for students. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Wisconsin-Madison or any of its affiliates.

In addition, Wisconsin Watch receives free office space in the Marquette University Diederich College of Communication in Milwaukee in support of its partnership with Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

Wisconsin Watch is a founding member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a group of nonprofit journalism organizations that conduct investigative reporting in the public interest.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Trust Project, a global network of news organizations that has developed transparency standards to help news readers assess the quality and credibility of journalism. Learn more about how we incorporate the Trust Indicators on our site.

Wisconsin Watch is also a member of The Global Investigative Journalism Network, an international network of nonprofit organizations founded to support, promote and produce investigative journalism.

Our mission:

To increase the quality, quantity and understanding of investigative journalism to foster an informed citizenry and strengthen democracy.

Our values:

Wisconsin Watch values truth and pursues it through accurate, fair, independent, rigorous and nonpartisan reporting. We also value transparency, collaboration, innovation and a spirit of public service. These values guide Wisconsin Watch’s training of journalists and its investigations, which seek to protect the interests of people in vulnerable circumstances, expose wrongdoing and deficiencies in systems, and explore solutions to problems.

Our guiding principles:

Protect the vulnerable. Expose wrongdoing. Explore solutions.

Standards and practices

How we work
Republishing guidelines
Ethics
Fact-checking our stories
Fact-checking our fact briefs
Corrections and clarifications
Guidelines on use of unnamed sources
User agreement and privacy policy

Our people

Staff
Board of Directors
Journalism Advisory Board
Former staff, fellows and interns: Where they are now

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

DEI at Wisconsin Watch
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report, 2022
DEI Board Task Force and Staff Committee
Staff demographics
Our anti-racism stand and a pledge of action

Get in touch

Contact us
Public Engagement and Opinion
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Subscribe to our free email newsletters

Funding

Make a gift
Watchdog Club and Leadership Circle
Join the Legacy Society
Sponsorship
How we are funded
Tax returns and financial statements
Fundraising policy

Editorial reports, newsletters and blogs

Project archives
Audio stories
Instagram
WisconsinWeekly
WisconsinWatch.org newsletter archives
News about Wisconsin Watch

Impact

Awards and honors
Annual Reports
Partners and collaborators
Impact: How our stories make a difference
The Trust Project
How we track our stories
Testimonials from journalists, educators and the public

Work with us

Internships
Current job openings
For students: How to get involved with Wisconsin Watch
Pitch guidelines for freelancers
Send us a tip
Be your own watchdog
Open government resources
Wisconsin Watch logos

---

Article Post Types

Reading Time: 3 minutespost

X

In May, as the state Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee considered a plan to spend far less on education than what Democrat Gov. Tony Evers proposed, Sheila Plotkin started filing public records requests.

Plotkin asked nearly every member of the Joint Finance Committee for correspondence they had received from Wisconsin residents about education funding.

All of the legislators Plotkin contacted provided responsive records for free. All, that is, except one: state Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), the panel’s co-chair, wanted Plotkin to pay $100.41 for location costs.

To Plotkin, this was a nonstarter.

“I’m a citizen on a fixed income and cannot afford $100.41,” said the 81-year-old retired educator from Madison. “I reject these charges. I think it is an attempt to price individual citizens out of” public records.

Similarly, Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council President Bill Lueders asked Nygren in June for communications about the state budget. Nygren had claimed that the Republicans’ budget bill was crafted based on public input, so Lueders asked to see what members of the public said.

Nygren agreed to produce the records — but only if Lueders paid an upfront search fee of $334.66. Lueders declined, noting that in numerous past requests no legislator had ever before charged him location fees.

Most recently, state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) demanded that I pay nearly $200 in search fees. This was in response to a request I made in July for emails about proposed legislation to keep the names of lottery winners secret. I sent the same request to the bill’s other leading co-sponsors — state Rep. Gary Tauchen (R-Bonduel) and state Sen. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) — and they provided records at no charge. Wisconsin Lottery Director Cindy Polzin also responded to the same request and released records for free.

The hefty search fees from Nygren and Vos come after an appeals court blasted fellow GOP state Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) for refusing to release electronic records, in response to a lawsuit filed by Lueders in 2016. A three-judge panel held that records that exist in electronic format must be produced electronically upon request. 

Based on that appellate ruling, Plotkin won a settlement in her own suit against 14 state lawmakers — including Krug and Vos — who had similarly refused to release emails in electronic format.

But now that legislators are barred from charging print copy fees for emails, it appears, some are finding new ways to impose significant search fees on requesters.

State law allows public officials to charge the “actual, necessary and direct cost” of locating records when this is $50 or more. But the law allows authorities to waive or reduce fees when doing so is in the public interest. Nygren and Vos chose not to do that.

There’s no question the public interest would have been served by waiving the fee for Plotkin, who regularly requests emails and correspondence that Wisconsinites send to lawmakers. She posts the findings, which often show that lawmakers vote against the wishes of those who contact them, on her website, we-the-irrelevant.org.

Open government is a proud tradition in Wisconsin. Charging requesters exorbitant fees frustrates that tradition and the spirit of the public records law. The citizens of this state deserve better from Nygren and Vos.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Jonathan Anderson is a former Wisconsin journalist and current Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Your Right to Know: Lawmakers use costs to rebuff records requests is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A week after Republicans in the state Legislature voted to gut the public records law in 2015, members of the Assembly sought to quell backlash over the plan.

A resolution that passed 96-1 affirms that the Assembly “remains committed to our state’s open record and open government laws and policies, and will take all necessary steps to ensure that these laws and policies are preserved without modification or degradation.”

Fast-forward two-and-a-half years: Has the Assembly kept its promise? Here are some recent events to consider.

In November, Assembly Chief Clerk Patrick Fuller and Senate Chief Clerk Jeffrey Renk denied public records requests from multiple news organizations for records of personnel and sexual harassment investigations.

Among other reasons for withholding the documents, the clerks claimed disclosure would have a chilling effect on employees’ use of the Legislature’s internal complaint process. This position was backed by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh), who argued that releasing records in such cases could reveal the names of victims and witnesses, even when identifying information has been blacked out.

Viewed in the best possible light, these are not unreasonable concerns. But courts in Wisconsin have repeatedly affirmed that disclosing records about alleged misconduct by public officials and employees serves the public interest. And judges have found that victims and witnesses can be protected by redacting identifying information while disclosing the substance of what happened.

That same month, the Assembly passed a bill that blocks release of most police body camera footage. Only recordings depicting deaths, injuries, searches and arrests would be subject to release.

The measure further requires law enforcement agencies to deny requests for video recorded in places where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as inside homes, unless all witnesses, victims and property owners sign a waiver consenting to the video’s disclosure.

Open government advocates, including the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, believe the bill unnecessarily hampers access to body camera footage, which the public is paying for. Already, the law allows police to deny release of records when the harm from disclosure outweighs the public interest.

Separately, the Assembly is considering a bill that would seal court records about people wrongfully convicted. The measure, AB 548, effectively turns the public records law on its head by requiring that records be confidential unless a judge finds there is an overriding public interest in access to the documents.

While the aim of the bill is commendable — to help those exonerated rebuild their lives — sealing off all records about wrongful convictions goes too far. Access to such information is essential if the public has any chance at holding prosecutors, judges and the justice system accountable for wrongful prosecutions.

So, to review: The Legislature has refused to release records about personnel and sexual harassment investigations, advanced a bill to restrict access to body cam footage, and is considering legislation to seal off documents about wrongful convictions.

Has the Assembly kept its 2015 commitment to ensure the public records law is “preserved without modification or degradation?” You be the judge.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government.Council member Jonathan Anderson is a reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

Your Right to Know: Lawmakers should keep promise on transparency is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Should enforcement of Wisconsin’s open records and open meetings laws depend on individual citizens having to file often costly and protracted lawsuits?

That is one option prescribed under these laws, and those who prevail in such cases can recover attorney’s fees.

But the laws also contain provisions intended to help people resolve disputes in a cheaper and less complicated way: Citizens can ask the state attorney general or county district attorney to sue a government authority, and any person can seek advice from the attorney general.

Yet, more than three decades after the Legislature enacted these provisions, questions about their effectiveness remain.

Gannett Wisconsin Media recently highlighted the cases of citizens who, after being brushed off by prosecutors, successfully sued public officials for violating open-government laws. Gannett’s stories also noted that Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has not filed a single lawsuit to enforce compliance with these laws, while his predecessor, Peg Lautenschlager, had filed just a few such cases.

The stories shed much-needed light on how difficult it can be to fight improper government secrecy. They also touched on a broader problem: Hard data on disputes brought to the attorney general and district attorneys is almost nonexistent.

I’m writing this column to help fix that.

Recently, I completed a master’s thesis in media studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on how the attorney general’s office has handled complaints about the public records law. I analyzed documents from more than 300 public records disputes during a six-year period. I also interviewed 17 people involved in those disputes.

Here is what I found:

• The attorney general’s office denied every request for legal action, but such requests accounted for just a quarter of cases. Most of the time, requesters sought advice.
• Nearly half of the cases directly concerned whether a requester had a right to a record. Other common issues included response times, fees and definitions in the law.
• Cases overwhelmingly involved local authorities as opposed to state government.
• The office was relatively timely, responding to nearly three-quarters of requests within 30 business days. Still, the range of response times varied widely — from within a week to nearly a year.
• The office at times actively worked with parties to mediate disputes, though the degree of that engagement was inconsistent.

Ultimately, the findings confirm that the attorney general can play a meaningful role in helping citizens use the public records law and challenge improper government secrecy without litigation. At the same time, the study revealed complaints about and drawbacks to how the attorney general handles disputes.

For one thing, the study highlighted how difficult it is to track what kinds of complaints are being received and what is being done about them. In Gannett’s reports, a spokesperson for Van Hollen said the attorney general’s office does not track open-government complaints. That should change.

The office should regularly report caseload statistics about requests for assistance on the public records and open meetings laws, as do other states, including Pennsylvania and Indiana.

The office should also actively publish open-government correspondence containing noteworthy advice. It has not done so recently or on a routine basis.

Such action would enable citizens to monitor developments in the public records and open meetings laws, and to assess how the attorney general is handling disclosure disputes.

That is information everyone has a right to know.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. Jonathan Anderson is a reporter for The Lakeland Times in Minocqua. His thesis is at wisfoic.org/documents/Thesis-JA-031214.pdf.

Your Right to Know: AG’s office could do more on openness is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.